Tap Totally Locked!

The Locko is an outdoor water tap meant for installation in gardens and public areas. The concept addresses the need for keeping these faucets secured and locked as unauthorized people may use them. The Locko uses a combination lock system to keep the tap locked and only those who know the combination will be able to use it. This will help prevent water theft (yes this happens!) and wastage. LOCKO is a 2012 red dot award: design concept winner.

17 Comments

How can exercising a basic human right (accessing clean drinking water) be theft? What a disgusting design! If wastage is to be prevented, designing a self-sealing tap would be worthy of a Red Dot Award.

This could be very useful actually. I am a property owner, and at many of the places we have had to remove the outside taps because irresponsible tennants or random people turning the water on and not turning it off. This wastes water, and can lead to an enourmous water bill.

Great point from Cathryne and the others. Cathryn maybe this is not something to be used in places where water is scarce, but for first world countries I don’t see the problem. It might be annoying but there is a need for it. My condo complex has an outside tap by the compactor, and even though the faucet is accessible, the red handle to turn it on/off is in a box on the wall that only opens with the compactor’s key.

Even in 1st world countries, there are people who can’t afford to purchase clean drinking water. Even those who can might want to have a sip, instead of going to buy it bottled (including plastic waste). During some travels to North America I was pleasantly surprised to find my drinking fountains in public buildings and parks. Here in central Europe, there are far too few. Water

And again, if carelessnes of users is really a problem, why not deploy a self-sealing mechanism that doesn’t affect people’s access to the water.

In any case, I’d like to see a few case studies in a few months/years about how this design fares in the real world. I suspect it solves the problem it diagnoses, and I suspect it creates more/different new ones.

Before jumping into the human right and trash a nice work, please, think twice. This type of locks are used for places that are not used for drinking, but mostly for lawn watering. There are many places where people have shortage of water, and if irresponsible subjects leave the faucets open, mostly thinking “I don’t care about others, I need to water my lawn”, this type of device will prevent water waste. Another case, when the there are water meters installed and the owner of the connection pays for water and someone leaves it open, where your human rights will end up in?…